I rarely hate someone, it just doesn’t seem to be worth the investment of energy and emotion that someone you could hate should ever deserve. I prefer a sort of studied indifference, I choose not to spend time with people I don’t like if I can help it.

But there’s this man on the plane I couldn’t help but take an instant dislike to – before we’d even got ready to take off he was sitting in his seat with his headphones on, shouting on one of the members of staff to put his bag up in the locker for him. He wasn’t an old man, in shape enough to have crossed the threshold of a gym in the recent past – not incapacitated, is what I’m saying. He clicked his fingers and shouted ‘ni hao’ across the cabin and it was hate at first sight.

It was the way he pulled his shoes and socks off so that I had to stare at his naked toes for 14 hours, the way he’s raised complaints about everything he possibly can, harassing the onboard staff with his trivial complaints. He keeps starting films, then stopping them and finding other ones. Some of them he’s started in the middle, then discarded.

I’m aware that it’s completely irrational to have formed such a deep opinion of somewhere I’ve never met (he just sneezed three times in a row and that really irritated me, there was something rude about it), but when you’re tired and it’s a long flight you need something to do. Especially when the wifi wasn’t working and the in-flight entertainment packed it in at one point. I had to spend nearly 20 minutes with my own thoughts, which was fairly harrowing.

It’ll be fine once I’ve landed, because I’ve got no memory for faces and I’ll forget who he even is. Maybe it’s not studied indifference, my magnanimity towards the awful is simply the virtuous side effect of a useless brain. I’ll take it though.